I sold 4 FRE Jan09 3 Covered Calls on 10/20/08 for a net deposit of $29.00 in an IRA account.  My basis on these FRE shares is now 7.76.

Since the Feds came in and became the conservator for FRE they are no longer paying a dividend.  My only interest in FRE now is to get back to even and get out.  I could get out now but since this is an IRA account I cannot use the losses so have decided to continue to work it off with covered calls for as long as I can.  Besides, I have enough losses in my taxable account to last me for a life time. 

On 8/18/08 I STO 4 FRE Sep08 6 Covered Calls for a net deposit of $189.00 in an IRA account.  My basis for this lot of FRE shares is now 7.83.

200 of these FRE shares were put to me as a result of the Aug08 option expiration.  I purchased 200 of the FRE shares late in July and sold Covered Calls on them then.  So now I have 400 FRE shares in this IRA account.

My thoughts about FRE are much like those I have for FNM which I just wrote about.  FRE has not cut its dividend but I suspect that it is just a matter of time.  If not, then so much the better.

As with FNM, I will continue to hold and sell Covered Calls on FRE while I wait to see what develops.  This activity is also a gamble.  On a side note, I tell myself that I should not do these kind of trades but sometimes it seems I just cannot help myself.  It adds an element of excitement to the process.

Here are the results for the options that I still had outstanding when the markets closed on Friday, 8/15/08.  I had four Put assignments and 22 Calls across multiple accounts that expired allowing me to keep all of the option premium.  The 22 Calls are summarized by stock across accounts resulting in 16 stocks being represented in the following list.  I will begin to sell Calls on these stocks starting tomorrow.